Journal article
Current controversies and irresolvable disagreement: the case of Vincent Lambert and the role of ‘dissensus’
- Alternative title:
- Current controversy
- Abstract:
- Controversial cases in medical ethics are, by their very nature, divisive. There are disagreements that revolve around questions of fact or of value. Ethical debate may help in resolving those disagreements. However, sometimes in such cases, there are opposing reasonable views arising from deep-seated differences in ethical values. It is unclear that agreement and consensus will ever be possible. In this paper, we discuss the recent controversial case of Vincent Lambert, a French man, diagnosed with a vegetative state, for whom there were multiple court hearings over a number of years. Both family and health professionals were divided about whether artificial nutrition and hydration should be withdrawn and Lambert allowed to die. We apply a ‘dissensus’ approach to his case and argue that the ethical issue most in need of scrutiny (resource allocation) is different from the one that was the focus of attention.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 234.4KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1136/medethics-2019-105622
Authors
- Publisher:
- BMJ Publishing Group
- Journal:
- Journal of Medical Ethics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 45
- Issue:
- 10
- Pages:
- 631-635
- Publication date:
- 2019-08-08
- Acceptance date:
- 2019-07-12
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1473-4257
- ISSN:
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0306-6800
- Language:
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English
- Pubs id:
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pubs:1032376
- UUID:
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uuid:85ac2ed0-7300-44d6-9133-1d2e47d02bed
- Local pid:
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pubs:1032376
- Source identifiers:
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1032376
- Deposit date:
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2019-07-16
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Wilkinson, D and Savulescu, J.
- Copyright date:
- 2019
- Rights statement:
- © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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